Dark clouds gathered slowly, thread by thread, massing ahead in the sky.

Along the road from Hangzhou to Huzhou, the flight continued.

Looking back on it from later days, when Hangzhou fell on the fourth, the crowds had fled the city in a state of utter panic, with no plan at all. Afterward, most people’s most immediate choice had been to head for Jiaxing, since at that time Fang La’s forces still had various encirclements and blockades in place, which had left many people stranded along the way. It was not until the sixth or seventh that these large groups, scattered and cut down along the road, began gathering together again and restoring some semblance of order.

By this point, Fang La’s rebel forces converging on Hangzhou from the west had reached near saturation and had begun expanding outward in every direction. The refugees, having regrouped, each painfully chose their own direction to flee, gathering and scattering across the land around Hangzhou—a land not deeply mountainous but crisscrossed with waterways. Some were caught by the rebel forces and slaughtered where they stood; others were captured in batches, robbed, seized, and sent back to Hangzhou.

Of the months since Fang La had raised his army, this was the peak of his momentum. Fang Baihua held off Kang Fangting’s Wuzhou Camp in the northwest, while in the south, Chen Shisheng’s Wuwei Army was caught in a pincer between Deng Yuanjue and Si Xingfang along the way. Fang La, together with Fang Qifo and the others, had taken Hangzhou with overwhelming force, and after that, uprisings echoing his cause sprang up everywhere. On the roads surrounding Hangzhou, by the time the bewildered refugees had come to their senses, they discovered that, starting from Hangzhou, almost every direction had become a minefield of danger.

Apart from those who scattered into the mountains and villages to hide and, by sheer luck, managed to escape disaster, there were, in the end, very few cases of large groups successfully escaping the territory around Hangzhou intact. Most of those driven out of the city, left homeless and adrift, eventually became either sacrifices to, or the earliest subjects of, the “Yongle Dynasty” that Fang La would later establish. For a time, the influence belonging to the Wu Dynasty in this stretch of Jiangnan was pressed down to its lowest point. Of course, if one looked for small points of brightness within all this, they could certainly be found.

The whole affair took place in just one small corner, at the border between Hangzhou and Huzhou, where the largest fleeing column out of Hangzhou—having gathered a great many wealthy merchants and gentry—wound its way, twisting and turning, to this spot. The entire preparation for what followed took place in less than two days, from the early hours of the tenth to the morning of the eleventh.

On a strategic level, a day and a half was hardly enough time to carry out anything too complicated. At that point, the rebel forces closing in from behind numbered five detachments in total, led respectively by five commanders under Fang La: Yao Yi, Lu Qiao, Xue Dounan, Mi Quan, and Shen Zhucheng. The small number of Black Plume Guards, along with the portion of the Overlord Blade Camp then under Liu Dabiao’s command, were not yet counted among them. Together, these five detachments numbered over six thousand troops, their morale running high. The fleeing column, meanwhile, had roughly three thousand remnant soldiers, plus around a thousand bodyguards and hired protectors belonging to the various wealthy merchants and gentry—though unlike an organized battlefield, the combat capability of these thousand or so men was not to be relied upon.

Looking back afterward, these several forces, within a range of less than forty li, had really only carried out a simple crisscrossing maneuver and a bit of psychological warfare before each side began playing at strategy. The affair itself was simple enough, but the outcome that followed proved somewhat unexpected. Of course, at the very moment things began, the ones caught off guard were not only the forces under Fang La—even the fleeing column itself, after a period of utter bewilderment, only gradually came to understand what was happening.

Under the gathering storm clouds, in the oppressive, restless heat, the column stretched out along the winding riverbank, extending off into the distance. This advancing column numbered nearly ten thousand people in total. At its rear end, a quarrel and the beginnings of internal discord were brewing, with whispered murmurs spreading through the crowd. Meanwhile, toward the front and middle of the column, a number of mounted soldiers and clerks rode back and forth, most carrying paper and brush, dispersing into every small group within the remnant troops to record what needed to be recorded.

Conducting this kind of census in the middle of a flight for survival seemed rather hasty, but the order had come down from above that very morning with a simple message: Chen Xingdu, the current leader of the column, had spoken carefully with the local gentry led by Tang Xiuxuan, and the word was that as long as the column made it to Huzhou, every soldier there would be honored as a hero of the escort. To ensure that credit could later be properly awarded, they were now recording the name and hometown of every person present, so that no soldier or officer, high or low, would be overlooked. And any among them whose family had died or been separated in Hangzhou would receive additional compensation—this being the reward everyone deserved for having escorted these “great personages” to safety.

After the fall of Hangzhou, the Wude Camp had found it nearly impossible to maintain its original organization. Although the column still contained over three thousand soldiers, each man’s unit affiliation had become thoroughly jumbled, and most had lost any real will to fight. The reason Chen Xingdu had become the military leader of this column was simply that his own men were now the most numerous, numbering over seven hundred. The rest, though they too followed his orders, proved considerably more troublesome to coordinate in practice.

The Wude Camp, though nominally an elite force, had in truth never had much real combat experience, and after this crushing defeat, many would have shrunk from even the thought of rebuilding any kind of formal structure. Yet once this order to compile records came down, the men—for the sake of convenience in recording—began gathering themselves back into groups on their own, provisionally electing officers based on their original camp assignments. Though it looked, in a sense, like everyone simply carving out their own little territories, it did, in the end, establish a somewhat tighter organization. During this process, Chen Xingdu naturally placed a number of trusted men in key positions to build up his own influence, ensuring that orders could be passed down more swiftly.

As the census of troop numbers went on, rumors began to circulate among the soldiers and civilians alike. Naturally, some of these were negative—word of the pursuing forces closing in from behind, and of the roads ahead being blocked, had already begun quietly spreading, eventually reaching everyone’s ears. But other, different rumors also began to spread through the whispers of the crowd.

“Master Tang and the others—they’ve already got a plan…”

“I heard someone from the Tang family has ties with the bandits at Qingfeng Stronghold. Now that we’ve got over three thousand from the Wude Camp with us, Qingfeng Stronghold will let us pass…”

“No, that’s not it. I heard there’s a man named Ning Liheng who came up with some scheme—figured everything out down to the last detail. General Chen and the others treat it like a treasure. My cousin’s over at the main camp, saw it himself last night…”

“Who’s Ning Liheng?”

“Heh, you don’t know? This fellow looks like nothing more than a scholar, but they call him ‘Ten Steps, One Calculation’—and on top of that he’s got tremendous martial skill. Back in Hangzhou, when Fang La’s people were tearing up the city, he helped plan things out. Later, that Shi Bao, Fang Qifo, and the others went to kill him personally, and instead got outmaneuvered by him—he killed several of them and walked off without a scratch, left Shi Bao and Fang Qifo with egg on their faces. Ah, what a shame the city fell so soon—if it had held out just a few more days, they say Fang Qifo himself would’ve been finished off by him…”

“…I heard he’s got another name in the martial world too—not ‘Ten Steps, One Calculation,’ they call him the Bloody-Handed Butcher. We’re definitely getting through this time…”

All manner of wild rumors were told and retold until they took on an almost mythical quality, and even Ning Yi’s actions back at Taiping Alley, along with all his various nicknames, spread far and wide in the telling.

Of course, none of this did much to ease the anxiety already rising in most people’s hearts. With enemies both ahead and behind, few could bring themselves to place much faith in some previously unknown young upstart—even if he was now being painted as a reincarnation of the legendary strategist Zhuge Liang, it hardly inspired much confidence.

And yet, at this point, the soldiers, wealthy merchants, gentry, landowners, and officials within the fleeing column had, in truth, very few options left. Once Fang La’s forces caught up with them, there would be no chance of escape—only certain death. Under these circumstances, they had no choice but to believe in whatever they could find to believe in. But those within the column who had little or nothing to their name were a different matter. They had simply been swept along with the crowd, believing the group offered safety, and had followed along on that basis—but now, hearing this sudden news, they were thrown into anxious disarray. The column’s order had never been particularly strong to begin with, riddled with all sorts of underlying tensions that had only been held in check, until now, by everyone pulling together. But once this despairing news spread, those tensions erupted almost immediately.

For these ordinary folk, even if caught, they still had the option of surrendering, or scattering and hiding in mountain gullies or villages. As long as Fang La’s forces didn’t wipe out the entire population around Hangzhou, there was still some chance of slipping through unnoticed. By the afternoon of the tenth, amid the reckless indecision of the column’s leadership, after the group crossed a tributary of the river near a place called Shiqiaobin, a minor brawl broke out and became the spark that split the fleeing column into two factions—one of roughly seven thousand, the other of nearly three thousand.

This group of three thousand began turning northeast, attempting to head toward Jiaxing, skirting around Qingfeng Stronghold and Xiaoluo Town ahead. Most of these people were ordinary civilians, though a number of self-styled clever merchants and officials had mixed in among them as well. In their view, since the pursuing rebel forces were mainly after money, if the other seven thousand could serve as bait, they themselves would stand a reasonable chance of survival. There were also those who sensed danger ahead and simply chose to leave the group outright, scattering into the surrounding countryside disguised as ordinary civilians.

Meanwhile, the pursuing forces behind them were also beginning to run into some difficult, hard-to-resolve questions of their own. As they drew closer and closer to this largest fleeing column, a jumble of conflicting information began appearing before them, seemingly out of nowhere.

From the stragglers they captured, they could easily extract all manner of information—the size of the column, the internal discord beginning to surface within it, the increasingly mythologized rumors circulating through it, things like “Ten Steps, One Calculation” and the “Bloody-Handed Butcher,” said to have left Shi Bao, Fang Qifo, and Liu Dabiao with egg on their faces—and then, word that some people had begun leaving the group to travel alone, or reports that certain wealthy merchants or officials, sensing the urgency of the situation, had begun breaking off from the column to flee into the mountains.

For a column of ten thousand people in flight, the trail they left behind was, in fact, fairly easy to read—but at this point, a series of things emerged that muddied the picture: valuables scattered along the route of flight, leading off in different directions. The scouts of all five armies were pressing forward, and in different directions, kept running into scouts from the Wude Camp as well. Yao Yi and the others, marching north together, had never been particularly unified to begin with, and disputes naturally broke out over the division of spoils and plunder. In the end, to maintain a temporary peace, the five forces spread themselves out at a distance from one another and advanced in the same general direction—since they’d all chosen the same direction, Yao Yi and Lu Qiao’s groups ended up quarreling with each other yet again over it. Of course, at this point, none of them were particularly worried about the prospect of an actual battle. Even if they caught up, three thousand-odd remnant troops, surrounded by seven thousand men, could hardly manage anything.

That evening, the main force of the fleeing column—the seven thousand or so who had remained together—doubled back from the area near Shiqiaobin where they had originally crossed the river, passing almost directly by Yao Yi’s northward-advancing forces. Under cover of night, the column moved south several li and made camp along a treacherous stretch of river bend. The waterway here curved like a hook; as they turned south and doubled back, the various traces they’d already left along the earlier route, combined with the river now blocking the way both east and south, meant this river bend formed a kind of pocket that enclosed them. If Yao Yi and the others were to turn south, they would find themselves in almost certain death. But for the moment, Yao Yi and his men were themselves in a hurry to press north in pursuit, and had no time to investigate further.

That night, the five forces advanced north along different routes; the several thousand men under Xue Dounan and Mi Quan even passed directly across the river from where the column lay camped in the bend, and both made camp for the time being in different areas roughly ten-odd li from this spot. That night, the camp along the riverbank was almost suffocatingly silent. If the five pursuing forces broke camp the next day and continued north, the column would gain its first opportunity to attempt some further maneuver.

No one dared light a fire, no one dared light a lamp. Everyone who understood the gravity of the situation instinctively held their breath at this life-or-death juncture, not daring to speak above a whisper. But throughout the night, the tale of this daring reversal, slipping right past Yao Yi’s forces, spread quietly from mouth to mouth among them—what had really only been a small tactical maneuver, but everyone needed something to hold onto for confidence.

By the following day, dark clouds had gathered overhead. The Wude Camp sent out its finest scouts, keeping watch on the movements of the several forces to the north. Yao Yi’s army began breaking camp; Xue Dounan and Mi Quan’s forces began breaking camp; Shen Zhucheng’s forces began breaking camp. Lu Qiao’s column, trailing at the very rear, followed Yao Yi’s route toward the Shiqiao crossing—and then, just before noon, on the very eve of crossing the river, came to a halt…

He had begun to turn back.

…

At noon, on a hilltop to the north, a man named An Xifu sat on horseback, leading the Black Plume Guard swiftly northward.

His task differed from that of Yao Yi and the others, and differed too from Liu Dabiao, who had come along on something more like a personal whim to find someone. To disrupt Huzhou so it could not reinforce Jiaxing seemed simple enough on the surface—Yao Yi and the others treated it almost like a pleasure trip, a chance to unwind and make some money—but he was the one responsible for the bigger picture.

Hunting down fleeing refugees along the way was simply harvesting spoils, something that could be handled carelessly enough. But Huzhou, after all, still had its own defending forces, and so he led the Black Plume Guard swiftly north, already well ahead of the others’ pace. Groups like those at Qingfeng Stronghold and Xiaoluo Town, who had risen up on their own without any prior contact with Fang La’s side, needed An Xifu to come through and grant them a proper banner, ensuring they would actually contribute real effort in the fighting to come.

By now they had drawn close to Xiaoluo Town ahead. A scout who had been left behind to watch the movements of Yao Yi and the others came riding back, reporting, as usual, on each of the five commanders’ daily progress. Looking over the intelligence the scout brought back, the black-clad man tapped a spot on the map absently, frowned, and set the map aside. He found this whole lot far too lazy and slow-moving—slow to fight, slow even to loot money, utterly hopeless. As for that fleeing column, there was indeed something a bit strange about it, but the thought only flickered through his mind briefly, and he did not dwell on it further.

It wasn’t until a quarter hour later, as the group gradually descended the hill, that something began nagging at the back of his mind. He found himself pausing, distracted, several times, then picked the map back up to look it over again. After a moment, his brow genuinely furrowed. “That can’t be right…”

He raised a hand to signal the column to halt, then called the scouts forward and had them report, one item at a time, everything they’d heard since the previous day. In the process, he found himself recalling what had happened to Shi Bao and the others back in Hangzhou, recalling too the reason the Liu family’s daughter had come this way in the first place. Nothing was certain yet, but as he turned it all over in his mind, a certain sense of foreboding seemed to press down on him from the darkening sky to the south.

“Ning Liheng…” he murmured to himself. “I hope… it isn’t that…”

…

The sky had darkened. In the camp, Chen Xingdu sat in his tent with two trusted subordinates, going over the plan Ning Yi had drawn up, when word came from the scouts—and his face went entirely pale.

“How… how could this be… it shouldn’t be…”

Instinctively he looked back at Ning Yi’s plan. It was somewhat complex, but persuasive. Up to this point, in truth, it had only amounted to a beginning. To be fair, this remaining army, several thousand strong, might still manage to break through past Qingfeng Stronghold and Xiaoluo Town and push north to Huzhou—it wasn’t impossible. But with the pursuing forces now closing in from behind, if the fighting dragged on even a little, they would find themselves surrounded and swallowed whole by nearly ten thousand men. And given how utterly devoid of fighting spirit the officers and soldiers currently were, the idea that things might go smoothly was simply out of the question.

Stoke internal conflict, use those three thousand as bait, have their own group double back quickly and hide in ground the enemy was unlikely to search, and then, once they found some gap in the enemy’s coverage, change direction again to gain more room to maneuver. Ning Yi had given a great deal of analysis regarding the feasibility of this—the temperaments of the enemy commanders, how to use gold, silver, and psychological tactics to widen the distance between them—honestly, he had laid out a great many contingency plans, with almost every scenario anticipated in advance. When Ning Yi had arranged for some soldiers to plant false trails to sow suspicion among the pursuers and cause them to scatter, Chen Xingdu had genuinely come to have a good deal of confidence in him—especially with Qian Haiping there beside him, recounting how Ning Yi’s earlier scheme against Shi Bao and the others had followed much the same pattern, and had proven highly effective.

The re-registration of the troops within the column had likewise been Ning Yi’s suggestion, and the rumors and the split that followed within the column had, for the most part, borne out exactly what the plan had predicted. They had indeed managed to hide here for one night undetected—but they had never expected that, at this most critical moment, the enemy would still discover them and begin doubling back.

The plan had, through various means, assured them the enemy would be thrown into confusion, and through elaborate reasoning had established its feasibility; everything that followed had likewise been laid out temptingly enough. But the one thing it had never made clear was what to do if this particular moment arrived. Someone had apparently raised this very concern at the time, and Ning Yi, sick and weak as he was, had only said: “Watch how things develop, and then decide whether to go ahead with it, all right?”

None of them had ever seen a plan laid out in such thorough, persuasive detail before. Even Tang Xiuxuan had said, “We have to take the risk, one way or another.” The powerful confidence Ning Yi had displayed at the time, along with the intricate arrangements he’d made in other areas, had been enough to overcome the doubters for the moment—but now, it felt as though a club had come down on their heads: the very next day, the plan had fallen apart at almost the most fatal possible moment.

After sitting stunned for a good while, Chen Xingdu snatched up the plan and strode out. The weather was stifling and overcast; the others did not yet know the news, and simply waited in silence. He made his way to the Su family’s tent, where Ning Yi had only just woken from sleep. Since the evening of the ninth, the fever in his head had grown steadily worse; now it took Su Tan’er’s support just to help him sit up from the bed. The high fever had, for the time being, dulled his ability to think clearly, and when Chen Xingdu entered, he seemed somewhat dazed at first, shaking his head slightly. Chen Xingdu studied him for a moment, then spoke, his voice tight with suppressed trembling. “Something’s happened…”

Ning Yi rubbed at his head. “Yao Yi… no, Lu Qiao… it must be Lu Qiao…”

Before he could finish speaking, Su Tan’er, kneeling beside him and straightening his robes, spoke up. “General Chen, where is Lu Qiao now?”

Chen Xingdu was momentarily taken aback, looking at the two of them, then tossed the plan aside, snatched up a map, and marked a point on it. “He’s at the Shiqiao crossing—he’s begun doubling back! He’s discovered us!”

Ning Yi thought for a moment. “And the others?”

Chen Xingdu marked four more points in quick succession—the five points on the map now formed a fan shape, already closing in around them, some closer, some farther. Ning Yi studied the map for a long moment, then closed his eyes. “Then what are you waiting for?”

“You…”

“Lu Qiao’s force is only a little over a thousand strong. We have four thousand. They’re scattered right now, separated by the river, and soon enough the others will discover us too. General Chen, this is the best moment we’re going to get to take them out one by one. This is all I can do—what are you waiting for?” Before Chen Xingdu, the scholar rose to his feet with visible effort and looked at him, his voice not raised, but steady. “They’re all scheming against each other, spread far apart, unable to reinforce one another in time. Once you crush this force, the siege on Huzhou will be broken entirely. General Chen, when the time comes for promotions and titles and honors for your family, your share is guaranteed. You know that.”

Chen Xingdu hesitated a moment, then said through gritted teeth, “You’re toying with me… You know as well as I do—once an army starts to collapse, there’s no stopping it. These men can’t fight anymore… not even against a little over a thousand…”

“But this time we’re not fighting for someone else. Since yesterday, we’ve made sure they understand exactly how serious this is. If there’d been any room to slip away, they could have stripped off their uniforms and hidden in the mountains by now. There’s no such option left. We have no retreat left behind us at all—it’s burn the boats and break the cauldrons. Right now, these are desperate men fighting for their lives. If we don’t push forward, it’s certain death.”

“But if… if we lose, do you understand what that means…”

“You believed that plan too, didn’t you!?” Ning Yi’s voice rose slightly, and he gritted his teeth, pointing at the plan Chen Xingdu had thrown to the ground. “It was all a bluff—that’s as far as it goes! I’m no immortal—how could I possibly have calculated that much in advance! General Chen, I could only control things for this one day. These men have been the pursuers all along, they’ve grown careless, and for the moment they’re caught off guard, unable to react quickly. If this counterattack fails, once they collect themselves, we won’t have any chance left at all.”

“Someone else can point the way, but you have to earn your own life! In a situation like this, there’s no clever trick left that can keep you alive without a fight.” He looked at Chen Xingdu. “My wife is pregnant. If four thousand can’t beat a thousand, we all die here—it’s as simple as that.”